


a Rose by any other name (ain't gonna happen)

by bendingsignpost



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alien Culture, Culture Shock, F/M, Fluff, Name Changes, spoilers for Gem Harvest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 13:03:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8752645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingsignpost/pseuds/bendingsignpost
Summary: “Wait,” Rose interrupts, “you can do that?”
(in which Rose discovers name changes)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vyc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vyc/gifts).



“Wait,” Rose interrupts, “you can _do that?_ ”

 

“Well, yeah,” says Greg – Greg? Still _Greg? –_ with a shrug. “I mean, you gotta fill out a form or two and promise you’re not trying to commit tax fraud or anything. Plus it totally tanks your credit rating, but it’s not like I’ve ever had much of one.” He clears his throat and runs a hand through his hair, his ever-growing hair. “Anyway, my family really didn’t take well to the whole music career idea—”

 

“No, no,” she interrupts again, touching his free hand to keep him here, because she’s not sure she can walk the boardwalk and talk about this at the same time. No distractions, not for something as big as this. “You changed your _name_. How?”

 

He turns, and stops, and stares. His arm almost moves away, and Rose doesn’t have to be Garnet to see the future where he pulls back and crosses his arms. But he’s not doing that now, not here and now, so he can’t be that angry and she needs to know.

 

“Rose, I just told you. I’m trying to talk to you about my family.”

 

“But I want to talk about _you_ ,” she says, and somehow, that is the right thing to say.

 

He holds her hand properly, warm skin over tendons and bone, and she wants to know everything about him. She always wants to know everything about him, lately.

 

“Okay,” he says, and his voice is soft without being any quieter.

 

“How can you change your name? How does it work? What does it _feel_ like?”

 

He sighs. “You want to talk about ‘me’ as in ‘me, the piece of humanity,’ huh?”

 

“I don’t know,” Rose says. “I think… I think this is something humans have words for that Gems don’t. Like fusion for us.”

 

“What, paperwork?”

 

Rose laughs, as hard as he always makes her laugh. “No, silly. We have that too, just not on paper.”

 

“But Gems change names too,” he insists, even though that’s patently wrong. “When you and Pearl fused, that was Rainbow Quartz, not just, I dunno, Rose-and-Pearl.”

 

“But Rainbow Quartz is someone else,” Rose says. “She’s not me. She’s me and Pearl together, and she thinks differently than either of us. She’s a separate person: of course she has her own name. But Pearl is Pearl, and I’m Rose Quartz, and that isn’t something Gems can change. We’re named what we are.” She touches her Gem, her truest self, for emphasis, but he looks, as always, at her eyes.

 

“You could still change that,” he says. He looks at her, and he looks at her longer, and he says, “What? I got something on my face?”

 

“My name is what I am,” she states, and there is as much pride in that as there is confusion.

 

“You look upset,” he says. He moves to pull his hand away, but she squeezes it as tight as she can without hurting him. He holds her hand tighter, adding, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh. I don’t think you need to change your name or anything. I mean.” His face reddens, but from the inside, not from the sun. “If you wanted to, y’know, eventually, I would totally support that.”

 

“I don’t think I can,” Rose says. “I don’t think any Gem can.”

 

“That’s fine,” he tells her quickly.

 

“...I don’t know if it is.”

 

He blinks up at her. “Is my stage name giving you an existential crisis?”

 

“You’re not on stage now.”

 

“No. Definitely on the boardwalk. Causing a scene.”

 

“Is your name still Greg Universe?” she asks, because she honestly doesn’t know.

 

“Yeah,” he says. “C’mon, let’s go sit somewhere.”

 

“It’s all I used to call you.”

 

“It was flirty – I liked it.” He pulls on her hand. He tips his body at a hard angle until she follows and she knows he’s trying to make her smile but she can’t.

 

They sit down on the beach and her mind is still racing.

 

“Hey,” he says. He leans up, leans close, the unfailing way flowers watch the sun. “I’m still me.”

 

The racing stops.

 

The waves keep breaking. Greg keeps breathing. But everything else… stops. There’s his face, and his eyes, and there is no true self adorning his body, except _through_ those eyes.

 

“You’re just so… _inside_ ,” Rose says, and this time he notices she’s touching her Gem. “It’s hard to see you sometimes.”

 

Greg lets out a slow “huh.”

 

“When did your old name stop being you?” she asks. “Or, when was Greg Universe created? Is that a better way to ask it?”

 

“That’s, uh. Y’know, you’d think those questions would have the same answer.”

 

“They don’t?”

 

He shakes his head, oblivious to his own impossibility. “I know I’ve wanted to be Mr. Universe since I was, I don’t know, ten? Eleven. I had my music and I wanted a name awesome enough to match.” He laughs uneasily. “Not that the stuff I was writing then was actually awesome, but I thought it was.”

 

“You were creating,” she marvels. “Before you were fully formed.”

 

He swats at her with a laugh. “Humans are never fully formed. Fully grown, maybe.” And then he shrugs, as if dismissing this as mundane. “Anyway, creating something doesn’t mean you’re creating something good,” he adds, casual, off-hand, and everything stops again.

 

A sentient being with only of a fraction of a century lived, and he knows something Home World in its ancient entirety will never grasp.

 

“You’re amazing,” she says, and if she could be breathless, she would be. This is what it feels like. This must be what it feels like.

 

“I was a pretentious kid,” he counters, chin ducked a little, unable to see himself for what he is. For _who_ as well as what. She wants to stay with that, needs to linger, but Greg moves on and she’s too fascinated not to follow. “Anyway, the name kicked around in my head for a couple years before I mentioned it to anyone. Once I did, I just… wanted it? There wasn’t really any going back.”

 

“Did you have to learn to respond to it? Mr. Universe.”

 

“Let’s just say it’s really easy to respond to when you’ve got a gorgeous lady whispering it to you,” he says, leaning up in a way flowers don’t and humans do.

 

They kiss, but she has more questions. She asks them sideways, chin on her palm, elbow on the sand. “You kept the Greg part. Is the Greg part the most _you_ part?”

 

“Uh,” he says, staring at her mouth. “Oh, uh, yeah. I’ve always been a Greg, not a Gregory. That might be more like you, though? Because you’re Rose. I mean, you’re Rose Quartz, but you’re Rose.”

 

“I’m obviously a Quartz,” she says, gesturing to herself. “‘Rose’ specifies the type, so the ‘Quartz’ is more implied.”

 

“I knew it was the color, but I wasn’t sure if it didn’t have something to do with your plant skills.”

 

“Most Rose Quartz don’t,” she tells him, not without pride. “I have an affinity for organic life.”

 

He laughs and reaches for her. “Yeah, I’d say you do.” They laugh together, and this time, Greg pulls back from the kiss. “Do you think of yourself more as Rose or as Rose Quartz?”

 

She blinks. “I’ve never thought about that.”

 

“I’ve always thought of you as just Rose. Mostly because we all just call you Rose.”

 

“Everyone on Earth,” she says. She frowns. “Greg, is it normal for your name to change depending on where you are? Stage names for stages and Earth names for Earth?”

 

“I guess?” he says. “I mean, we’re different people in different places, so it’s not that weird.”

 

She stares at him again.

 

He stares back, one eyebrow raised.

 

“You’re right,” she says, and something inside her, something around her, shifts.

 

“Well, uh, learn something new everyday, huh?”

 

She nods. He smiles at her, and she wants to know who their fusion would be. What their name would be, how their body would form, how their Gems… Gem would shine. They’ve tried and failed and it was never a possibility, will never be a possibility, but now she _wants_.

 

“It was DeMayo, by the way,” he says. “The name my parents gave me was Gregory DeMayo.”

 

“Tell me more about him?”

 

Greg flops onto his back. “‘He’ is still just me, Rose.”

 

“I don’t know how to phrase it,” she says. “I just want to know all the people you can be.”

 

He turns his head, and his eyes are as soft as his voice. “Sometimes, you’re kind of adorably alien, you know that?”

 

She tugs him against her side – this person, this Greg, _her_ Greg – and says, “No, _you_.”


End file.
